Seamlessly Interfacing Automation Systems with Simulation Models

Simulations are important in the context of Industry 4.0, especially in the commissioning phase of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). A problem that often occurs in retrofitting scenarios, in which simulation models and control systems are partly already in place, is that the interfaces of the simulation models and the automation system are not interoperable. Modifying the interfaces prolongs development time and possibly introduces errors. This paper presents a method that attempts to solve this issue by semi-automatically connecting the interfaces to establish data flow between these systems. A proof of concept implementation is developed along a use case of a thermal-hydraulic system to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed approach. Therefore, the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) and OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) are used, as they are widely accepted standards for simulation and machine-to-machine communication in the industrial domain.